


As fire uncovers the impurities in gold

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2109537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fëanor and Indis have a discussion regarding Míriel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As fire uncovers the impurities in gold

Fëanáro did all he could to meet Indis as rarely as possible, and so did she. The arrangement suited both of them, but did little to assuage their mutual aversion. It was therefore a particularly unfortunate coincidence when they found themselves alone in a drawing room where they had both hoped to find Finwë. Indis's biting remark (she had bit back too many of those) and Fëanáro's caustic retort (he could tolerate her presence but not her self-righteousness) were not imputable to circumstance.

“Say what you will, but I am your mother's friend and it would be admirable of you to acknowledge that,” she asserted. 

“Friend,” Fëanáro sneered, gazing out of the window at the other end of the room, his profile sharp against Laurelin's rays, his eyes alight with spite and resentment. “I wonder if you truly know the meaning of the word 'friendship'.”

“And you do?” Indis's tone conveyed a no less fierce animosity. 

“I have but few friends, yes. But I know I would not be happy to see them die, nor would I in any way try to profit from their death.”

“Profit?” It was a brazen, false accusation. Indis felt its sting cut her to the quick. “I care for your father, I love him. My wish to marry him was not a way to “profit” from Míriel's death. I had no base motives.”

Fëanáro grimaced at the sound of his mother's name on the lips of the woman who had not batted an eyelid when it had been made known that the only way for her to marry Finwë was at the cost of Míriel's sacrifice. “Perhaps not base, but selfish. You accepted the Valar's ruling to the effect that my mother would be deprived of the right to come back to lif -”.

“She made that choice herself.” Indis did not allow Fëanáro to finish. She would not stand to be blamed Míriel's own choices as if she were a murderer. It had been Míriel who had abandoned her body in weakness, and who had affirmed before the Valar she would never return to it. The Valar's judgement had to be trusted. To suggest that it might have been wrong was blasphemy. "It was she who had the final say on the matter.”

There followed an endless moment of forbidding silence. Fëanáro seemed ready to storm out of the room. “She was ill!” he bellowed instead, turning the two words into lashes, wishing their indisputability could make the Vanya feel the same helplessness his mother had surely felt. “The Valar issued their decree and forced her to choose as a consequence of your wish,” he went on, with the same vehemence, veering from the window to stride towards the armchair where Indis was sitting, nearly knocking a coffee table with its precious glass and gold vase over, and stopping only when he was a couple of paces from it. “You consented to that. You have been flaunting your happiness, acting as if she never existed, and dare to rebuke her son for not loving you.”

Indis's face tightened, but she refused to back down. “I lost my parents too, in Cuiviénen. I know the bitterness of death.” 

“As did my own parents. And you made the Journey for that very reason.” Fëanáro's voice lowered, but he sounded even more wrathful. “Yet you are guilty of inflicting the very fate you were trying to escape from on me.”

Faced with his insistence and self-absorption (why should she have put his happiness before her own?), Indis's restraint snapped. “But how can I be responsible for somebody else's decisions? Are you really that puerile? Why do you refuse to see reason?” she screeched, twisting the delicate silk of her gown between her fingers. She had no more sensible words against mindless stubbornness. 

Fëanáro regarded her blankly, as if stunned by her inability to comprehend something that was obvious to him, that ate at him and harried him at every moment. His next words were surprisingly calm, his reasoning, contrary to what she expected, lucid and sound. (If he had raged at her, she would have had an excuse to dismiss it. She would have felt justified, even.) 

“Your responsibility in the matter is not lessened by the fact that you only gave tacit consent by agreeing to marry my father. You said you were moved by love, very well. That doesn't erase the fact that you turned on one you insist on calling “friend”, and who needed time and serenity and the certainty of her family and friends' affection to heal. You contributed in taking all three from her. You only compound your guilt by refusing to recognise it, hiding behind the screen of so-called friendship, and love.”

“I am your mother's friend and I could be yours too,” Indis repeated, automatically. “And even if what you say were true, would I really be beyond forgiveness? Your father is guilty of the same, is he not?” she quickly added, almost as an afterthought.

“Indeed.” The admission was prompt, but it was apparent that it took Fëanáro considerable effort, the true extent of which Indis could not begin to fathom. “There was love between my father and I before, nonetheless, and it has endured, because he does not account himself blameless, and because I cannot undo the bond of blood with him.” He had wished he could, sometimes, but his mother had loved Finwë too, and he had been born of that love. “You, however -” Fëanáro's tone was still even, but a distinct quiver ran through his body, and his hands curled into fist. He punctuated his next words, eyes fixed on Indis's own as he did. “I cannot extend the same goodwill to you, who are nothing to me. I cannot accept you as my father's wife, much less as my mother. I cannot accept your children. If I did, it would mean accepting that I will never see my mother again, that I condone the sentence imposed on her for the sake of your happiness. And I cannot do that. I cannot pretend that her suffering, her death are justifiable. I cannot let her die in my heart too.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a Metastasio quote _"Just as fire uncovers the impurities in gold, misfortunes uncover the hearts of false friends."_


End file.
